Mostly, I Write

Siamo un popolo di posseduti. Era l’unica spiegazione logica, in effetti Money quote: “One of the organizers of the Sicily gathering, Friar Beningo Palilla, told Vatican Radio there are some 500,000 cases requiring exorcism in Italy each year.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/02/23/vatican-host-international-exorcism-conference-meet-growing-demand/367735002/

L’allegro mondo dell’Accademia americana. Money quote: “When I left that institution, I landed in a bad Philip Roth novel set in the Midwest, where married faculty were insouciantly bedding grad students even as they sat on their committees, and senior faculty were sleeping with junior faculty even as they determined our merit raises. When faculty complained to the chair about the situation, she said her hands were tied. It was consensual, among adults. When another professor reportedly sent a photo of his penis to a grad student, giving new meaning to the term faculty member, I didn’t stick around to debate the point.” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/20/real-scandal-academia/

Perché gli esseri umani si suicidano e gli altri animali no? Abbiamo trasceso gli imperativi della biologia e siamo sciolti da ogni vincolo, anche rispetto alla nostra stessa specie? Money quote: “The trouble is, all human beings have moments of despair. It is a grand, if tragic, truth that because humans have ambition that is so much higher than other animals, hurting is bound to be a part of life. The Italian poet Cesare Pavese said it explicitly: ‘No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.’ The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once told a friend that ‘all his life there had hardly been a day, in which he had not at one time or other thought suicide a possibility’. More typically, among today’s US high-school students, 60 per cent say they have considered killing themselves, and 14 per cent have thought about it seriously in the past year” https://aeon.co/ideas/humans-are-the-only-animals-who-crave-oblivion-through-suicide

Il New York Times vuole rovinare la festa dei Bitcoin? Money quote: “Money is supposed to be a means of buying things. Now, the nation’s hottest investment is buying money. And the investment rush is raising questions about whether one reason for the slow pace of economic growth in recent years is that the nation is busy distracting itself. While Bitcoin mining may not be labor intensive, it diverts time, energy and capital from other, more productive activities that economists say could fuel faster growth.“ https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/business/economy/bitcoin-electricity-productivity.html

Google vuole innovare la posta elettronica (di nuovo). Questao volta trasformandola in AMP, come le pagine web. E non è una bella cosa. Money quote: "See, email belongs to a special class. Nobody really likes it, but it’s the way nobody really likes sidewalks, or electrical outlets, or forks. It not that there’s something wrong with them. It’s that they’re mature, useful items that do exactly what they need to do. They’ve transcended the world of likes and dislikes." https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/13/amp-for-email-is-a-terrible-idea/

Insegnare informatica significa far imparare a usare un computer o programmare? - il mio articolo per Wired Italia Money quote: "Ormai nella didattica alla voce informatica entra tutto: dal videogioco alla lavagna multimediale (la famigerata Lim), dall’Ecdl (il patentino europeo per usare il computer) all’apprendimento di un linguaggio di programmazione come fosse una lingua straniera. Ma tutto questo è veramente informatica? E cosa si dovrebbe realmente insegnare nelle scuole primarie e secondarie?" https://www.wired.it/play/cultura/2018/02/28/informatica-computer-programmare/

Signal, il servizio di messaggistica realmente sicuro (ma un po' negletto), lancia la sua fondazione, per tirare su due soldi. Con loro, arriva uno dei co-fondatori di Whatsapp, il riccone che ha lasciato Facebook e adesso si dedica al suo nuovo hobby. Money quote: "We’re glad those are the choices we’ve made. Today, we are launching the Signal Foundation, an emerging 501(c)(3) nonprofit created and made possible by Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, to support, accelerate, and broaden Signal’s mission of making private communication accessible and ubiquitous. In case you missed it, Brian left WhatsApp and Facebook last year, and has been thinking about how to best focus his future time and energy on building nonprofit technology for public good. Starting with an initial $50,000,000 in funding, we can now increase the size of our team, our capacity, and our ambitions. This means reduced uncertainty on the path to sustainability, and the strengthening of our long-term goals and values. Perhaps most significantly, the addition of Brian brings an incredibly talented engineer and visionary with decades of experience building successful products to our team." https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/

Il pulsante con le faccine che vale più di complicate ricerche di mercato Money quote: “By the standards of traditional market research, HappyOrNot’s analysis was simplistic in the extreme. There were no comment cards, customer surveys, focus groups, or reports from incognito “mystery shoppers.” There was just crude data collected by customer-operated devices that looked almost like Fisher-Price toys: freestanding battery-powered terminals with four big push buttons—dark green and smiley, light green and less smiley, light red and sort of frowny, dark red and very frowny. As customers left a store, a small sign asked them to rate their experience by pressing one of the buttons (very happy, pretty happy, pretty unhappy, or very unhappy), and that was all.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/customer-satisfaction-at-the-push-of-a-button

Se c'è uno che bisognerebbe leggere sempre, perché quando è in giornata fa scintille, quello è Leonardo Tondelli. In questo caso, su The Vision (che non so cosa sia, ma da oggi lo seguo). E questo articolo sul liceo classico (che modestamente pure io) in cui si racconta a cosa serve, varrebbe anche solo per le fotografie, come dice il mio amico Mattia che me l'ha segnalato. Perché alla fine siamo tutti uguali, ma proprio tutti uguali, a generazioni e ritagli sociali. Money quote: "Il Classico è ancora uno status symbol, o almeno è percepito come tale (ma c’è differenza?). Non è una cosa che i presidi possano scrivere nel Piano dell’Offerta Formativa; in compenso vi sarà capitato di leggere qualche Rapporto di Autovalutazione stilato da un insegnante o un funzionario un po’ troppo sincero (magari non sapeva che il Rapporto sarebbe stato pubblicato sul sito del ministero, e scambiato dalla stampa per “pubblicità classista”). Nel tal liceo ci sono pochi stranieri e neanche un disabile; in quell’altro si lamenta la presenza dei “figli dei portinai”. Il liceo classico è anche questo. Lo è sempre stato: la scuola per i rampolli di buona famiglia. Magari la famiglia non è così buona, ma mandando il ragazzo/a al classico spera che possa salire quel gradino sociale che evidentemente ancora esiste. Chi ricorda con affetto gli anni del liceo tende sempre a non far caso a quella cosa: i pesci non fanno caso all’acqua. Questo non significa che il Classico non possa davvero essere una formidabile palestra di vita. Seneca e Orazio possono davvero aprirti la mente; Tacito può davvero allenarti alla complessità. Ma forse è più facile che succeda in una classe piccola, senza compagni “problematici”." http://thevision.com/attualita/liceo-classico-status-symbol/?sez=all&ix=1?sez=all&ix=1

Ma, così, tanto per dire: e se gli Illuminati esistessero veramente? Da cosa dipende la nostra propensione a cogliere schemi e intenzioni anche nel caos? Il filosofo Julian Baggini spiega con brio - tipico della pubblicistica in generale e di quello che ci si può aspettare dal Guardian in particolare - una cosa che a molti sfugge: gli adepti delle grandi cospirazione sono solo un pochino più in là, ma non di tanto, rispetto a tutti noi altri. O no? Money quote: "When we dig for the truth, we flirt with madness" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/14/illuminati-running-world-not-mad-idea-questioning-hidden-power-elites-sane

La matematica è un linguaggio, né più né meno, anche se un tipo di linguaggio particolare. E questo signore su Medium secondo me è ancora piuttosto confuso, anche dopo aver letto il libro di Helen Walker. E un po' ossessionato dai suoi fantasmi. Però tutti lo siamo, e il suo momento di illuminazione è divertente perché alla fine secondo me è un momento in cui vede i suoi pregiudizi dal di fuori, cioè in questo caso l'intenzione e l'espressività di quella che lui ha evidentemente confuso con una serie di procedure meccaniche e mnemoniche. Sempre sia lodata l'illuminazione. Dopodiché, è un pirla. Money quote: "Before I go on, I’m pointing out this perception of women as second-class citizens of the mathematics world, to make a point about the different contributions of insiders (men) and outsiders (women). You may believe this is a gender issue, but not all of it. Like all good mathematicians, male or female, I want to reduce the problem down to its simplest form." https://medium.com/q-e-d/that-loser-woman-mathematician-who-changed-my-life-7df96e218eb1

Cos'è la fantascienza, perché serve, in cosa differesce rispetto al desiderio di disegnare il futuro. Vale la pena, se non altro per sentire la voce di William Gibson e quella di Vinton Cerf. L'assunto di base, cioè che chi abbraccia una tecnologia non è più in grado di giudicarla criticamente e invece la cosa interessante è guardare agli effetti che ha sulle persone, mi sta ipnotizzando. Money quote: "the young aspiring science fiction writer William Gibson was looking for a place to set his first novel. Gibson was living in Seattle, and he had friends who worked in the budding tech industry. They told him about computers and the Internet, "and I was sitting with a yellow legal pad trying to come up with trippy names for a new arena in which science fiction could be staged." The name Gibson came up with: cyberspace. And for a guy who had never seen it, he did a great job describing it in that 1984 book, Neuromancer: "A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding."" https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/02/20/583682937/the-father-of-the-internet-sees-his-invention-reflected-back-through-a-black-mir

⚠️ Quando mi attraversa un pensiero di quelli che il cuore comincia a battere per conto suo o mi manca il fiato faccio una di queste cose https://twitter.com/tree_of/status/967810176987385857 o una combo, tu?

Vivere in un mondo il cui obiettivo è quello di rendere tutto più facile sta diventando un incubo. Money quote: "An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is easy is that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme, we dont actually do anything; we only arrange what will be done, which is a flimsy basis for a life." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-convenience.html

Gli archetipi dell’inconscio collettivo. Che meraviglia. Che frode. Money quote: “According to Jung, his ‘discovery’ of a collective unconscious began in 1910, shortly after he had left his post at the Burghölzli Hospital in Zürich and set up private practice in Küsnacht, on the edge of Lake Zürich. The catalyst was a passage from Albrecht Dieterich’s 1910 translation of the Mithras Liturgy, which described the wind as emanating from a pipe or tube hanging from the Sun. The image was uncannily familiar to Jung. A few years earlier, a patient at the Burghölzli Hospital had, Jung recalled, taken him to one side, pointing out how the Sun had a phallus that was responsible for the movements of the wind. Since Dieterich’s account of the solar myth had only just been published, there was, to Jung’s mind, no ready explanation of the corresponding symbolism. The patient’s hallucination had sprung from ‘the impersonal layer in our psyche’, a collective unconscious that, ‘independently of tradition, guarantee[d] in every single individual a similarity and even sameness of experience’.” https://aeon.co/ideas/what-was-the-beguiling-spell-of-jungs-collective-unconscious

La creatività è come un gas: se la comprimi diventa esplosiva. Se la lasci libera, si disperde. Ma la stessa idea si può applicare anche al business? Io sono perplesso, mi sembra un ragionamento piuttosto superficiale; invece, in determinati contesi sembra funzionare. Money quote: “Alex Halberstadt’s essay on Rodney Dangerfield is a masterclass on how to improve by reduction. Dangerfield worked for decades as a comedian until he figured out the thing, his insight: “by eliminating every extraneous element, you could isolate what makes it work and just do that.” Dangerfield reduced his act to just two lines: setup and punchline.” http://blog.aweissman.com/2018/02/addition-by-subtraction.html

La fantastica storia di come la Cina stia diventando un Paese di grandi innovazioni Money quote: "But a few years ago, China’s leaders decided they wanted the country to be known for a new kind of electronics– not only “Made in China”, but “Designed in China”. The authorities can’t exactly whip up innovation by decree, but the local government can influence real estate – and through a series of incentives and edicts, it began swapping out tenants. Many of the cheap electronics vendors packed up their boxes, while new technology businesses moved into refurbished office spaces: startups, investors and even patent attorneys." http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-china-became-tech-superpower-took-over-the-west

Ve lo ricordate Brendan Fraser? Era un attore fantastico, particolare, amichevole, molto fisico ma non faceva paura né incuteva timore né minaccia. E poi ha fatto un sacco di cose, fino alla Mummia. E poi è scomparso. Com'è, come non è, ecco la sua storia. La storia di molti di noi. Money quote: "He wasn't worthy of being Superman. He wasn't even worthy of being Brendan Fraser. And this feeling ate at him as the decade wore on, and he starred in movies he was less and less proud of, and his body deteriorated, and his marriage fell apart, and he kept thinking about what had happened to him in the summer of 2003: “The phone does stop ringing in your career, and you start asking yourself why. There's many reasons, but was this one of them? I think it was.” And that, he says, is why he ultimately disappeared for a while. “I bought into the pressure that comes with the hopes and aims that come with a professional life that's being molded and shaped and guided and managed,” he says now. “That requires what they call thick skin, or just ignoring it, putting your head in the sand, or gnashing your teeth and putting on your public face, or just not even…needing the public. Ignoring. Staying home, damn it. You know, not 'cause I'm aloof or anything, but because I just felt I couldn't be a part of it. I didn't feel that I belonged.”" https://www.gq.com/story/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser

Troppi aggeggi smart: ci stiamo dimenticando come si fa a leggere Money quote: “Books were once my refuge. To be in bed with a Highsmith novel was a salve. To read was to disappear, become enrobed in something beyond my own jittery ego. To read was to shutter myself and, in so doing, discover a larger experience. I do think old, book-oriented styles of reading opened the world to me – by closing it. And new, screen-oriented styles of reading seem to have the opposite effect: They close the world to me, by opening it. In a very real way, to lose old styles of reading is to lose a part of ourselves” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/i-have-forgotten-how-toread/article37921379/

C’è questo paesino upstate New York in cui ci sono più libri che abitanti e comunque ben 5 piccole librerie indipendenti. Alla faccia del Kindle. Momey quote: “You might expect neighboring bookstores to compete with one another, like side-by-side movie theaters or department stores. But Dales suspected that the opposite was true. Readers, like shoppers at the mall, often wandered back and forth between the shops. As more bookstores came to town, one of Hobart’s original booksellers (no one can quite remember who) began to describe the town as “the only book village east of the Mississippi.” (Other American book towns include Stillwater, Minnesota, and Archer City, Texas.) By 2005, when a New York Times writer passed through, Hobart had earned its moniker: “Hobart Book Village.”” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hobart-book-village